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Sounds good, and the whole implications of a self contained story set up alleviate my worries of another ME3 fuck up where they promise more lasting consequences and long term player agency then they can deliver.

Also I really hope there's a romanceable lady Turian this time. Garrus was my favourite FemShep paramour in the original trilogy, getting some more Turian love from the other side of the gender scale would be a nice bonus for long time fans, especially in light of how bloody long it took them to even create a single female Turian in the first place.

Dragon Age: Inquisition stands as the only RPG made in the Frostbite engine. While BioWare's Mass Effect team is taking cues from the openness of environments, they're also looking at Inquisition's quests -- both what worked and what didn't.

"We learned that there were some quests in Dragon Age that didnt resonate and were kind of flat  fetch quests and stuff, says Flynn. The nice thing is, you take those lessons, you package them all up, and you talk to the Mass Effect team and say, These are the things you should do, these are the things you shouldnt do. And the Mass Effect team get the pencils out and they build all that into it.

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Well, honestly it seems they're hitting all the right notes. From the info it looks like a significant improvement in graphics, combat, exploration, characters, morality system etc. if the length is right and the story interesting we might have a real winner.

To be fair when that shit surfaced all we knew was that MP had direct impact on SP ending(s) available to you. We didn't know that endings were RGB coded level pulls with very little meaning. It was clearly designed as way to force SP people to dip into MP.

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How do you explore the Andromeda galaxy without Mass Relays? Kind of a nit-pick, but it was one of the major technologies in the previous games. Reaper technology guided the development of every species. It was kind of fundamental to the lore of the game. None of the council species had managed to crack the technology behind the Mass Relay. The Programs, who were much more advanced than the council species, had only barely managed to make a one way mini-Mass Relay.

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How do you explore the Andromeda galaxy without Mass Relays? Kind of a nit-pick, but it was one of the major technologies in the previous games. Reaper technology guided the development of every species. It was kind of fundamental to the game.

Ehhhh... in ME3 multi you had a limited ability set and only had to worry about yourself. I can't imagine trying to queue up squad orders and movements without pausing, or playing a class like the Engineer where you've got a lot of plates in the air. I still hope there's a miscommunication somewhere.

How do you explore the Andromeda galaxy without Mass Relays? Kind of a nit-pick, but it was one of the major technologies in the previous games. Reaper technology guided the development of every species. It was kind of fundamental to the lore of the game.

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How do you explore the Andromeda galaxy without Mass Relays? Kind of a nit-pick, but it was one of the major technologies in the previous games. Reaper technology guided the development of every species. It was kind of fundamental to the lore of the game.

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Loving pretty much all of this information. Really looking forward to seeing how the multiplayer pans out, because it was a pleasant surprise with ME3. Also love the info re: squadmates and dialogue.

There seems to be confusion about the characters' names though, can we change Ryder's first name or not? The fact that this infodump lists three first names says no to me, but others seem to be sure the first name is set by the player. Not sure where the latter is coming from.

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Loving pretty much all of this information. Really looking forward to seeing how the multiplayer pans out, because it was a pleasant surprise with ME3. Also love the info re: squadmates and dialogue.

There seems to be confusion about the characters' names though, can we change Ryder's first name or not? The fact that this infodump lists three first names says no to me, but others seem to be sure the first name is set by the player. Not sure where the latter is coming from.

I wonder if you can manipulate power of The Tempest's engines by installing game either on SSD or HDD :b I kinda wish there was somekind space travel simulated as loading screen while being allowed to move around in the ship during it. Instantly popping next to the planet in 5 solar systems over would feel... odd.

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Relationships/Characters
-There are more relationships in the game than any other Bioware game (as they noted fans make a big emphasis on romance in the games)
-The squadmate with the least amount of lines in Andromeda has more lines than the squadmate with the most amount of lines in ME3
-Due to complications in the awakening process, your sibling won't join you in combat but you can interact with them and build a relationship
-Many of these dealings are optional, and discovering more about the Ryder family is a plot thread
-BioWare is confident the details of this story are what differentiates it from a traditional "hero's journey"
-Loyalty missions return but they are not critical to the ending of the game; you can complete them after you complete the main story path for example
-Emphasis that relationships don't just culminate in a sex scene, but rather characters can just want to get in the sack, while others are interested in long term relationships and others still aren't interested at all. Bioware wanted to capture more "shooting bottles with Garrus" moments in the game, of which there are plenty

I'm sure you can find many other similar promises in regards to other Bioware titles. It's not that I don't believe that they are listening it's more that I don't trust them to get the right massage from the feedback that they are receiving.

Like even in what you've posted there are no mentions of needlessly huge environments or the pointless collectables.

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So each planet not being a "linear slice" implies that each planet is an open-ended "zone" much like DA:I (and I suppose ME1)?

I'm fine with that as it's obviously unrealistic to have you roam around an entire planet but I hope these planets are far more numerous and varied with less overall "tasks" on each to keep the sense of space.

I really like everything I'm reading about the combat.

And hopefully Mac Walters learned to write better over the past 5 years.

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I'm sure you can find many other similar promises in regards to other Bioware titles. It's not that I don't believe that they are listening it's more that I don't trust them to get the right massage from the feedback that they are receiving.

Like even in what you've posted there are no mentions of needlessly huge environments or the pointless collectables.

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It's problematic, don't get me wrong, but it's also the polar-opposite of the bare, limited, street and dungeon-driven design of DA2 that felt cramped, shallow, and restrictive.

DA:I is big and vast... and empty. Again, don't get me wrong, it's got problems, but you can clearly see them making it with the mindset to avoid the trappings of DA2. They just stumbled into new ones when making the shift.

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My favorite part of KOTOR was how each planet you go to was basically its own large hub.

Mass Effect reduced that to pretty much just the Citadel and that smaller one on an ice planet. And Mass Effect 2+3 reduced the hubs even more; there may have been more, but they were pretty small and didn't give you much of a sense of exploration.